The Naknek Welcoming Committee
When Keith Combs and I arrived in the small town of King Salmon, Alaska last summer, we had an afternoon to see the sights of the town. It didn’t take long. In fact, our hostess, who’d been raised there, told us that when she’d left King Salmon to attend college out of state her classmates had teased her because she didn’t know the difference between a green light and a green left turn arrow. Up until then, she hadn’t needed to know such a thing.
With the sights fully seen, we headed to the Red Dog Inn, a local bar where the slogan on the wall is “Beer as cold as your ex-girlfriend’s heart.” Normally that might not be a big selling point in chilly Alaska, but it was short sleeve weather and we were thirsty. The commercial fishing season had just ended, and flights back to Anchorage and points beyond were still full and pricey, so many seasonal workers it was more financially savvy to wait in Bristol Bay than to head home. Many of them didn’t seem like they were in much of a hurry anyway.
You never know quite what to expect when you head into a local bar where you know people are flush with cash and drinking away their time, but we were welcomed with open arms. In fact, one of the guys at the end of the bar was a member of a bass club in Bellingham, Washington, and recognized Combs, which gave us immediate street cred. We really didn’t need it, though, because everyone was friendly, including one commercial fisherman who was a caricature of a caricature. I don’t recall his name, or if we even learned it, but he looked as if someone had taken Fletcher Shryock, Seth Feider and Jeff Spicoli and put them in a blender and taken out the resulting mix – long blonde hair, white-framed sunglasses, Vans, a flat-brimmed hat and loads of quality tattoos, each of which he was happy to explain in detail.
We sat with him at the bar for a while and then as we headed outside to go back to the lodge he went out to grab a smoke and we talked some more. In all likelihood, I’ll never see him again, and he’ll never read this, but meeting him was one of several hundred highlights in what was overall an incredible trip. At Bear Trail Lodge we met accomplished guides and anglers, as well as guests who’d been highly successful in several different endeavors. Those were expected. Our Red Dog Inn barmates, however, were a little bit of lagniappe. In our travels Hanna and I have been so fortunate to meet a wide variety of people from all walks of life, and while it’s not always possible or wise to “head into town,” I encourage everyone to take a step back from the “lodge experience” whenever possible. You’ll be richer for it.
